More gold medal success for China at 2019 FISU Summer Universiade in Napoli

They dominated the Mostra d’Oltremare pool once again with one gold medal from the men’s 10m synchronized platform and another in the mixed 3m synchronised springboard. Mexican’s athletes also came to the fore as they secured one silver in men’s 10m synchronised platform, and a bronze in mixed 3m synchro springboard.

With an outstanding total score of 431.16, Lizhi Cao and Zigan Huang won the gold medal in men’s 10m synchronised platform. They nailed their reverse three and a half somersaults with a high score of 90.78 in their fourth dive, which ensured they stayed in the lead until the final round. Mexico’s Andres Villarreal Tudon and Jose Dieg Balleza Isaias took the silver whilst the Canadian duo of Gosselin-Paradis and Ethan Pitman won bronze.

China’s second gold medal of the day came from Zijie Hu and Chunting Wu as they captured the gold medal with a total score of 301.38 in the mixed 3m synchro springboard. The Russian pairing of Egor Lapin and Evgeniia Selezneva took silver whilst Mexico’s Carolina Mendoza and Ada E Zuniga Ornelas earned the bronze.

South Korea’s Park Dae-hun added another shooting title to his impressive young career on Friday as he cruised to an impressive gold-medal performance in the men’s 10m air pistol. Park, the current world No. 11 and a 50m team pistol gold medallist at the 2018 ISSF world championships, dominated from start to finish in his first event of Napoli 2019.

Seeded first after the qualifying phase thanks to a score of 581 which was five points better than his closest competitors, he shot a Universiade-record 243.8 in the final to go clear of silver medallist Zhang Bowen of China (238.5) and bronze winner Sajad Poorhosseini Lafmejani of Iran (216.6).

Holding an insurmountable 6.4-point lead before his final shot, Park closed out the contest with a solid 9.8. Zhang responded with a perfect 10.9 on his final attempt but it still proved not enough to overtake the 23-year-old Park. The gold medal was his second Summer Universiade triumph after he prevailed on home soil in the 50m pistol competition at Gwangju 2015. The sport was not part of the FISU Games programme two years ago in Taipei.

Japan celebrated a further three victories in the judo competitions. Two of those came in the women’s event as Nana Kota took gold in the -63kg category, beating The Netherlands Geke Van den Berg in the final, and Kana Tomizawa winning the -57kg divison overcoming France’s Gaetane Deberdt.

The third gold for Japan came in the men’s -81kg category as Hikaru Tomokiyo beat Moon Jin Lee from South Korea. 25-year-old Russian Evgenii Prokopchuk, who won a silver medal at the European Open in Rome earlier this year, won the -73kg category, beating Hidayat Heydarov OF Azerbijan.
Out at the Centro Universitario Sportivo Salerno campus, Erica Cipressa took home the host nation’s first gold in fencing’s individual women’s foil event. Cipressa dominated her final with Morgane Patru of France and easily secured the gold medal thanks to 15-3 victory.

Earlier on Thursday’s first day of the Napoli 2019 fencing competition Alexandra Louis-Marie of France and South Korea’s Oh Sang-uk captured gold. Louis Marie edged Russia’s Evgeniya Zharkova 15-12 in the women’s epee final, while Oh defeated Frederic Kindler of Germany 15-11 to claim the men’s sabre title.